Never to Part

By: Gus Victoria

Beyond a bedazzled shore

A ghostly vessel

Adrift a silvery sea

Owned the tranquil night.

A single broken mast

Once proud with sail

Now sadly bereft

Mourned under the moonlight.

A lone figure stood

Upon that empty deck

A frantic eye searching

A treasure not yet found.

He was by her shade haunted

By her fate tormented,

Love heroically sustained

What guilt thought drowned.

He called out her name,

He cursed his god,

He burned with rage

As he shook with shame.

Silently we witnessed

This spectral spectacle

Of a repentant captain

And his forever doomed lover.

No one alive knows

Why the phantom players

Ever were parted.

No one can say

If ever they will

Find themselves reunited.

A lesson learned

Through ancient relic,

Upon the tablet scribed these words:

“Stone this love can make bloom,

And to ever part,

Is to part too soon.”

Corporate Wicker Man

By: Gus Victoria

The rivers run red with the blood

Of once-innocents dead.

For you they bled

And yet you decried

The violence you denied…

But we know you lied

They, hungry ghosts, wait

Wait for the time

That you cease to gorge

On the flesh,

The carcass of democracy!

Fuck you and your monarchy

To the throne of greed you bow

Fuck you and your money

To the throne of greed you bow

Terrified what to you is anarchy

But to me is democracy

Each blood soaked fist a vote,

Each ink-stained declaration

Your condemnation!

Fuck you!

The corporate wicker man burns!

The corporate wicker man burns!

The corporate wicker man burns!

The corporate wicker man burns!

Pink Toenails

(originally posted May 16, 2011)

Fox News is a silly thing. I tend to ignore it more often than not. To me that entertainment network has equal journalistic credentials as the Weekly World News. And while the Weekly World News may tell me that the Loch Ness Monster’s third cousin is living in an abandoned UFO at the bottom of a lake in Minnesota with the brain of Hitler in a jar that gives prophecies in the form of pie recipes what I WONT find is the kind of crazy Fox News puts forth.

Recently there was an ad put forth by J Crew that showed their Creative Director, Jenna Lyons painting her son’s toenails a bright pink. In the picture you can see a nice, tender, loving and fun moment shared between mother and son. That there is reaction beyond that is surprising to me. But oh boy is there. Fox News leads the charge of course, but they are not alone. Without pointing too many fingers (I only have ten after all and that’s simply not enough) I have to say that the very idea that such an act can lead to years of psychotherapy or are the genesis for gender identity issues is small-minded at best and dangerous at worst.

I’m not saying that little boys go put on dresses or little girls go pick up a toy gun. All I’m saying, if they’re young and they want to why not? It is not the gender roles imposed on us by millennia of culture and society that make us who we are. And to say that cosmetics or fashion is a harbinger of a societal shift towards a liberal “celebration of transgendered children” (ahem “Dr.” Keith I’m looking at you) is silly and shows ignorance of history. Centuries ago it was the men that were as peacocks with tons of make-up and incredibly elaborate clothing. Things that would be deemed effeminate today and thus condemned were normal years ago. So keep in mind styles and tastes change and do not mean more than the meaning we give them now.

The reaction from the conservative right was strong enough and lacking of both common sense and decency that it made me want to act and do something. I am a straight man that believes strongly in both women’s rights and gay rights. To me they are HUMAN rights.  Does that make me weak or less of a man? I have never thought so. I love all my friends regardless of sexual orientation because I believe love is universal and if we deny it to anyone we deny part of ourselves and demean ourselves in the process.

So what could I do?

Why paint my own toenails of course! And that I did. Luckily I have the love of a strong woman that believes as I do and was incredibly supportive of my decision to paint my own toenails a bright pink. She thought it was a great idea and even picked out a really shiny pink and painted my nails for me. It was fun! Here we were one evening; a straight couple having fun doing what others would say is gay or a cause of gender confusion.  I highly suggest others try this from time to time.

Because I was on vacation all of last week (which explains the lack of Sasquatch posts in that time, sorry!) and because in Florida that means sandals or bare feet, especially at the water parks, there was plenty of opportunity to show off my shiny pink nails! The reactions I got were fun and interesting to behold.

When I was with my lady holding hands people would look and their look of confusion was hilarious. Funny enough more than once it happened that she was blamed as the originator of the idea and that I was doing this to please her. The looks lost their confusion and became more judgmental when I was caught alone without her. Then I’m sure more than one person simply made the automatic assumption that I was gay. Because I live in the Orlando area and I was at Disney most of the time the reactions were only in stares and minimally invasive. Most of the questions came from our friends and once I explained my motives, to show that painting one’s nails does not make one gay or straight, most were on board.

This was a protest and experiment. I hope to be able to do it again not solely to provoke others, but to learn from their reactions and to hopefully open up some dialogue and perhaps to show that we need not fear a little nail polish. We are all people and embracing our differences makes us all stronger and makes the world a little better in the process.

This is love. No labels.

The Zombie Shuffle - A Bone of Contention

Slow shambler from Night of the Living Dead (1968)

By: Gus Victoria

The zombie creature has a short history in this country when compared to other types of undead. Our modern zombie has evolved from its West African Roots to become, like many other legendary creatures, divorced from its mystic origins and explained by a sober, logical, scientific methodology that replaces spirits with disease as the cause. Though there still remain supernatural stories of the traditional revenant (a body returned from the dead to assault the living) our zombie has gravitated steadily toward a tendency to be a walking scientific mutation; the physical embodiment of mindless disease and decay. While those topics are worthy of study and indeed will admittedly be discussed soon in future posts, today we focus on one aspect of this change that perhaps runs deeper than any philosophical debate on the nature of the dead and un-dead. There are very passionate supporters on either side of the aisle and this is my humble entrance into that debate.

What is proper zombie locomotion? Ought they be fast or slow? That friends is the real question.

The earliest zombie films of the 30’s and 40’s were still very much encased in their African and Caribbean trappings of Voodoo and depicted the zombie as a mindlessly obedient person devoid of what had made them an individual but not yet definitely dead. In other words the earliest zombies were not, in fact, part of the undead. Their bodies yet lived even if their personality or soul was missing and were otherwise possessed by an evil sorcerer.

Then along comes George Romero and gives us the modern zombie; a mindless flesh eating undead abomination. These creatures resembled more the ghoul of medieval folklore and literature than the zombie of the 20^th century. However the name stuck and forever these creatures that were neither fully ghoul nor voodoo in nature were to be known as zombies. The chief characteristics of these new creatures were that they were a re-animated human corpse, they held no qualities of the person to whom the corpse belonged to aside from the physical, and they preyed on living humans. For a long time their locomotion was also uniform in that they always moved in a slow, shuffling manner carrying their bodies clumsily as decay set in and continued unabated.

Then came a slew of video games and movies in the 90’s and 2000’s that further demystified the zombie and introduced us to a new species; the runner. Somehow the hallmark shuffle of the zombie was replaced by the hallmark pace of an Olympic sprinter. No attempt was made to explain this, but to be fair none was needed. It was a directorial choice that served and continues to serve a specific purpose. 

Sprinters from Dawn of the Dead (2004)

I have a problem with this! Some may call me a purist for insisting that real zombies be slow clumsy shufflers. Sprinters are, as depicted in film, physiologically impossible. They cheapen the scare by substituting a slow build up of tension and inescapable fear with quick cheap shock thrills. Where a catharsis may be possible with the slow unhalting horror there is little chance for that when the zombies are fast and the conflict is over in moments. Further I contend fast zombies are not zombies at all unless we are willing to redefine, once again, what a zombie actually is.

If indeed it remains true that a zombie is simply the re-animated corpse of a deceased human then Olympic zombies are simply impossible. Now there is a caveat here of course and perhaps in that room for compromise. Because the fast zombie is impossible in the strictest sense of undeath it does not mean the shambler is the only other option nor that fast speeds from some other zombie-like animation and/or mutation of tissues is not also possible. Many people point out rigor mortis as proof irrefutable that the fast undead is simply not possible. The problem with this is that the chemical process (or rather the ceasing of said process) that causes rigor would also make these corpses impossible to re-animate. You need all these systems – circulatory, nervous, etc. - to operate within the body in order for it to move. With re-animation the rules binding the body and enabling its locomotion are modified, whether by magic (spirits) or science (cellular mutation). It would be silly then to suspend belief on all other systems save the one whose cessation would cause rigor mortis and stiffen the corpse denying it world-class speed.  

Even so I insist that though rigor is not the cause of the slow walk it is a slow walk indeed that moves the undead creature. Let us assume that it is a pervasive virus or bacterium that causes widespread irrevocable cellular mutation allowing it to bypass and render other living systems obsolete once re-animation is achieved. Blood becomes unnecessary as well as the oxygen that blood carries and so forth. The virus or bacterium finds other ways to turn the corpse into its own personal meat-puppet. This is one of the only ways to explain the phenomena without resorting to magic and mysticism and the preferred explanation in recent film and literature it seems.

Throwing rules of anatomy and physiology out the window we must admit that fast or slow both types of zombies remain physically possible. I admit this begrudgingly. And even so I still hold on to the purist notion that the only proper zombie is a slow zombie.

The reason is because although we have admitted that with the explanation of unknown cellular mutations anything is possible I still believe that such a disconnect and subsequent re-wiring of the human machine from its source motor controls leaves a less than efficient creature. And if the virus is key is must take time to adapt to its host so that though physically possible at the point of death before decay, the replacement mechanisms aren’t in place to cope with the exchange of control as smoothly even if individual areas are indeed stronger than in life. For example the zombie may strike harder than any human but it does so dumbly and clumsily because of the lack of efficient sensory input and  motor coordination. These may come in time as the virus becomes more entrenched, but from the point of death on the re-animated is on a countdown; in a race with decay and without the natural means of regeneration it had in life. Yes, the virus may make up for some of this, but it will be a losing battle that will have some sort of time table; days, weeks, or months dependent on a variety of factors.

Therefore, for the reasons stated above I amend my purist stand somewhat. I enjoy the horrifying aesthetic of the slow unrelenting corpse crawling and clawing its way to introduce you to your doom but must admit that is simply the Romantic in me. Realistically (as far as we can take the word here) I believe the undead would carry a modified “deteriorating model” of locomotion. In other words upon death there would be no rigor mortis and the corpse would be free to be re-animated with its anatomical structures in the same condition they were at death. There would be no slowing save for that allowed by the adaptive virus as it takes control or replaces the systems that allow locomotion. Shortly after reanimation the zombie reaches maximum speed and strength. Then, even if the virus becomes better at controlling the undead pieces of the human puppet, decay begins to set in and there is a gradual slowing of the creature until either the virus is eradicated or the corpse is destroyed.

What do you think? Vote and comment below!

Far Wounded

By: Gus Victoria

You are my heart

That beats far away,

You are my future

That is no longer,

You are my past

That haunts forever.

Marriage to what once was

Is offensive

To all that will be,

For as you walk

I crawl,

And when you look back

I fall,

Memory’s sweet poison

Is the draught I drink,

Salting the wound

That time would heal

If ever we let it,

That time would yield,

I wonder…

Would we regret it?

PSA - Gin and Writing

(Originally posted October 3, 2010)

Blank empty space, save for a little flickering line. It flashes on and off proclaiming to you your inadequacy. This little cursor curses you as you stare at it seeing nothing behind it and only a sea of white empty space in front. It doesn’t matter if your essay is due in 5 hours or if you have three weeks to finish. That little fuck mocks you whether you have days to your deadline, or if slept right through it after that drunken office party. At some point every person that has ever had to write comes upon that proverbial wall; the dreaded writer’s block.

The reasons can be varied. Maybe your boyfriend left you for an Asian hooker named Jeff and you are suffering realizations of inadequacy. Perhaps you finally figured out that no one really cares about your lifelong collection of Osmond Brothers memorabilia.  Or it simply could be that you were born without an imagination.  Whatever the reason, the result is the same. You can’t for the sake of anything holy (or unholy for my Satanic readers) come up with words to fill your page. Everyone has their own remedy, and I encourage you to share yours in the comment box below. First though I will share with you my remedy.

The age-old companion of the artist: alcohol.

I never get drunk before I write, but sometimes a little bit of gin goes a long way.  Especially if it is mixed in some tasty juice, Snoop was definitely on to something. Now this is my drink of choice for writing of course. And let me tell you it always works, no matter what it is I am supposed to write about. Gin is to my writing as spinach was to Popeye’s biceps. It empowers me in weird and cartoonish ways.

It doesn’t make my writing good, but it allows me to tear down that wall that blocks me from writing. In the process I am usually able to find something usable and with some tinkering make it readable. Good writing takes talent, time, and practice so don’t think this remedy will make you the next King, Rowling, or Poe. For all we know your talent amounts to nothing beyond Meyer. If that’s case, please cease reading this now and go reassess your life. The world doesn’t need another Twilight.

I understand some people use music, poetry, or meditation to overcome this writer’s obstacle. They are nice and might work, but trust me; they are nowhere near as much fun.

Thalia and Sophia - Ode to Beauty

By: Gus Victoria

Dreaming on a lonely hill,

Far from your touch

I was visited

By a woman ethereal.

Attended by Morpheus she came,

Her beauty dazzled even the sleeping senses,

And her laugh was music divine,

She drew near, this angelic interloper,

And she bid me stand

That in my ear she could whisper her name;

“Thalia.”

“Why comest thou here?” I asked

And she laugh as she spake,

“Who art though to speak as thou hast?”

Mockery and jest her aim,

She struck true,

“The modern language you deny,

Preferring an archaic tongue; why?”

And I could not answer her but to say,

“Beauty is not today known,

Nor is it written

As once it was before.”

Sharing a smile with Morpheus

In sweet sympathy she shook her head,

“Oh dear mortal, of your own volition

You suffer this fatal condition,

A poet-scribe that has captured beauty

And held her hostage to your will.

I come therefore to plea, by my sisters and me,

That you set her free

As she is meant to be,

You love Sophia, prove it so.”

And I tell you love,

Intransigent and a fool was I,

Though I knew this muse well

And her sisters too,

“Nay, man values beauty and love not as before,

They walk in ignorance

Enchanted by soulless mechanical wonders

Bedazzled by talentless artists.

They have killed poetry,

They have buried literature

And worship comfort and coin!”

And then she did laugh her greatest ,

Such was her mirth

My own spirit was lifted

As she defeated me without debate,

“When has it not been so?”

Mistaken Bliss

By: Gus Victoria

Etched on the eternal wings of the ever present night

Is her name; She that in her faithlessness slew the sun

That twice-shattered heart once aflame

Frozen now beneath the darkest game

A love undone by a deed unseen,

She knew not the life she left

The future she sacrificed,

He knew not what he lost

When that day she left,

Slowly each withered

Far from the other,

His light now gone

Hers was replaced

By a dim lamp,

Not the star once hers,

She regretted the choice taken,

Every day of the rest of her life she knew

Never would she find one such as he

Lovers linked in lonely solitude

Never to be reunited

Never to know again

The joy

That once was theirs

That palette of their world,

Gone now,

Gone forever,

With a kiss

And in a moment;

Mistaken bliss.